Hamas Has Won This War. Their Secret Weapon? Jesus.

“Jesus was an indigenous Palestinian.”

When this idea began gaining traction on social media the week before Christmas, I figured it was so stupid, a normal Christian clergy person would just dismiss it and come up with some better material. But I was dead wrong. Over the holiday, I tuned in to some regular Christian congregations here in the U.S. and actually heard the following statements delivered with complete confidence:

• Bethlehem is part of Gaza
• The Church of the Annunciation is in the West Bank
• If Jesus, a Palestinian, were born today it would be under Israeli fire

I could not believe what I was hearing. No fact-checking went into a sermon that was delivered on one of the most important days of their year. Surely a Christian clergy person knows that Jesus was a Jew born in Judea. There were no Palestinians* during the time of Jesus. Palestine is not mentioned once in the New Testament because the land was not called that until around 130 CE after the Romans expelled the Jews from the territory. The specific purpose for this renaming was to disavow the Jews of their connection to the land. So I would argue that calling Jesus a Palestinian is not only an insult to Jews, but also a slap in the face to Jesus, his family, and his disciples — all of whom were from Judea. If he (a Jewish baby) were born today, it would be fair to assume that he would be a target of Hamas, not the IDF.